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The GOP agenda

— "Coming just weeks before midterm elections, Mr. Foley's resignation Friday and the ensuing scandal aren't well-timed for Republican fortunes. As lawmakers left Washington over the weekend to campaign, the news soured a political mood already strained by divisions between the House and Senate leadership and a failure to complete major domestic legislation," says the Wall Street Journal.

But, as the Washington Post points out, "House Republican leaders last week muscled through more than 165 bills that their members can use to win over voters back home -- and deflect attention from the scandals they left behind in Washington." More: "[T]his year's efforts focused less on home-district spending and more on substantive measures tailored to specific constituents -- a 'suburban agenda' for embattled Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia, bills to appeal to Christian conservatives for troubled Midwestern Republicans and expressions of independence for Republicans from districts that have turned against [Bush]."

The Hartford Courant, thinking along the same line, looks at the bills Connecticut's three vulnerable GOP House members are now able to tout on the trail.